In Farmers Alley’s crowd-pleasing, high-energy production of 1940s-era musical revue The Andrews Brothers, straight men dress up as women, white Americans dress up as indigenous Pacific Islanders, and a middle-aged woman dresses up as an ingenue.

By now, most people are familiar with Rosie the Riveter, the symbol representing the legions of women who filed into the workplace during World War II to take over the jobs of men sent overseas. Often, they were working to aid the war effort.

Before the premiere of “Citadel,” the new dance that closed Wellspring Cori Terry & Dancers’ opening night of Expedition: Spring Concert of Dance, Ms. Terry spoke from the stage, explaining that the push/pull, the conflicting energy of competition and need for connection, was the primary impetus for the piece. In other words, she was inspired by the 2016 presidential election, and the ways in which politics plays out at both national and local levels with people and their primary drives and desires at the center of it all.

More than 40 years after it landed on Broadway, there’s still a whole lot of magic left in The Wiz. Behold and believe: Director Jay Berkow’s buoyant, utterly delightful Western Michigan University Theatre production of this African-American revamp of The Wizard of Oz conclusively proves Wicked does not have the market cornered when it comes to Oz-centric musicals.

In the theater, timing is everything, and it’s difficult to imagine a better week than this one for the Kalamazoo Civic to open “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark,” Lynn Nottage’s bittersweet look at the so-called golden age of Hollywood, when African-American actors frequently found themselves with two kinds of parts to choose from.

“Golf is nothing but a good walk. Spoiled.” This paraphrased Mark Twainism opens “The Fox on the Fairway,” the most recent slamming doors farce from playwright Ken Ludwig, now playing at The New Vic Theatre in Kalamazoo.